A long serving member of our Rotary Club was honoured on Monday 14th April with a Paul Harris Fellowship. Mike Capper who has been a member for many years, and served as President in 2012-2013 was presented with his award by President Stefan Tkaczyk. Mike has supported the club in many ways and the honour is well deserved.

Another successful Half Marathon took place on Sunday 23rd March 2025, where 2500 runners entered. The event sold out a month before, which was fantastic, meaning the numbers have been steadily rising since Covid. Once again, the event was organised by Brentwood a Becket Rotary Club in conjunction with the Brentwood Running Club, Brentwood Theatre and St Francis Hospice. Although it rained early on, the weather was very kind to us once the runners set off, and it was of course well supported all the way round.

First man home was Adam Hickey who broke the course record in a time of 1.05.33, beating the previous time by over two minutes! Last year';s winner Emmanuel Adedeji could only manage second this year, three minutes behind Adam.
​Leading lady was Lauren Reed finishing in a time of 1.18.16. 

All the usual helpers assisted in the organisation, including the Air Cadets and the Army Cadets whose help in particular we couldn't do without. The Running Club did a fantastic job providing marshals all round the course, and much of the admin was shared between the Brentwood Theatre and St Francis Hospice.

President Stefan Tkaczyk inducting our latest member Gareth Barrett (former Mayor of Brentwood) in February

Saturday 1st March saw our latest quiz night take place, with over 200 people attending. Thanks go to Baker Labels for sponsoring the event once again, and we raised over £3000 net for the SNAP charity. 

We had our Christmas Meeting at the Bentley Golf Club once again, where we enjoyed a fantastic three course Christmas meal. Seventy eight guests were in attendance and we were entertained by our speaker Charlie Haycock who spoke to us about the English language. He informed us about the origin of words and the countries from which they arrived into England, together with how the various dialects and accents derived around the UK,  and how they developed. He was able to give us examples using his natural talent by talking in accents from all round the country, with his speech not only being very interesting, but humorous as well. The picture above shows our President Stefan Tkaczyk together with his lovely lady Gill. In addition, the evening would not have been the same without our traditional rendering of "The Five Days of  Christmas", in memory of John Roberts, the one member who made this song his own. He will always be remembered for completely ruining the chorus which we insisted he always sang on his own!